A/N: Here is the beginning of the sequel to Let Your Light Shine. If you haven’t read that one first, start there. I think this one can stand alone, but there will be some references made so check it out. Lemony goodness in both. I’m a lemon lover.

Thanks EVERYONE who reviewed Ch 17 so enthusiastically! It made my weekend! And then, crash, FF was down. BOO. I will reply to the reviews as soon as I can!! If you enjoyed it and didn’t review, please go back and let me know what you thought!

Hope you enjoy the next story. ~Lola.

*****

I knew how it had sounded, of course, when I had told Edward I wanted him to bite me after he made love to me. I wasn’t oblivious; I had realized even at the time that I needed to cringe a bit when I spoke the words out loud. But he had asked. He had wanted to know. I remembered his expression, pain, amusement, shock. He called it my ‘sexy vampire cliché’.

I drew strength in the honesty of my words as I repeated them again and again, even though he teased me and suggested he would need to buy a cape. Even though he pressed me for details he didn’t seem to want to hear. The more I said, the more he listened, the more his face softened at my fantasy, the fewer teasing words he spoke in return. I had not expected Edward to change his mind, but I never want to lie to him.

It was our honeymoon. We were insatiable. The first time we made love after that conversation, I wondered if he would take me seriously and decide to change me in the moment, swept up as my lover, not my protector. And after that, I never thought of it again when he was inside me. It was a wonder I could think at all with Edward naked, our limbs tangled, our words feverish.

And then: he was acting strange; I now understand. He had needed me to center him. Making love to me reminded me that he had immense restraint, it was his rally, his pep talk; I understand that now, too, all too well. I had taken him into my mouth hungrily – I knew no other way to take him - conveniently leaving the smell of him on my lips, on my breath. He had covered my neck in the moisture between my legs as we made love. He had put the anchor there, knowing he would need to be able to find where he went in, to be able to pull himself out later.

And, oh, how naïve I had been to not understand how delicate my skin was, how easily his teeth had pushed into my neck, as easily as a finger waves in the air, how eagerly my blood had rushed into his mouth, overwhelming even Edward, who had worked so hard to train himself to abhor the thought of my blood in his mouth. His cry was agony. I had begged him to go, to drink. His fingers had pinned me, his teeth sliced me quickly. No, not sliced. It implies some effort. It took none. My flesh was no barrier, it was a joke. And the entire time he drank, only one thought lingered in my mind, temporarily pushing the fire away. How could he make love to me all this time? All this time that strength had been restrained, chained. How did he manage? It would be like protecting a dandelion from the wind, protecting a sugar cube from scalding tea.

And with this realization, I found that the first things I lost were my tears. I could not cry at the realization of his immeasurable restraint, his monumental worship of my fragile body, akin to an egg shell on a bulldozer. It was too late to pour my heart into a kiss, to tell him that I now understood what it meant for him to be with me, to be inside me, to touch me at all, let alone intimately, passionately. I know only now why he resisted for so long. His teeth had sunk into my skin so easily, his fingers could snap my neck with a slight twist, what would be a nervous twitch to a human; in his hands it would be lethal. I knew that now.

*****

Now, I lay dying beside him. His cold arms shook around me with the effort it took to not sob against me as he had sobbed against Carlisle. His voice murmured in my ear constantly, stories of love, of lovemaking, of making me eternal. I wanted to reach out to him, soothe him, tell him he had made the right decision, that I felt the strength of us in the moments of release and restraint that he had allowed himself and that that was all I needed to make it through whatever came. But I couldn’t move. Now, my delicate skin was barely containing the fire beneath. A fire that flew from freezing, to burning, to freezing again; no relief provided in the fluctuation, no balm to my skin as from a cold pool to a warm bath. It was an angry fire. It hated me. It had corralled knives, shrapnel, and broken glass and was juggling it all in its tendrils as it cackled, as it crackled, the sharp items deflecting against my skin before descending for another round in the circle.

I found, if I could lie still, if I could focus on the sound of Edward’s constant voice in my ear, I could manage it. I could keep from screaming. I could keep from writhing in his arms. Because there was one thing I never wanted him to see, and that is how terrifying this was for me.

*****

A year may have already passed. Or it could have been only a minute. My body burned, my skin, I truly feared, was on fire. I tried to open my eyes to look but realized my lids must have burned shut. Scorched flesh? Pity, my face was now disfigured. Would Edward still love me? I turned my mind from the angry fire; its sharp vengeance punishing me for my innocence, for thinking if this was done in a moment of the truest love it would be different. I wanted to laugh at the naïve Bella of one year or one minute ago. I focused instead on the delicious cool arms around me. A whisper in my ear: the story of a dinner at Charlie’s house, after Edward returned from Italy, and after my chest had healed. Edward described Charlie’s thoughts that night, how he considered which gun he would like to use to shoot Edward. Edward laughed quietly in my ear as he described how I chatted away obliviously, wanting to soothe my two men at the table. And then his voice turned soft, promising to earn my forgiveness every day. As much as I hated that he felt the need to keep saying this, the constancy of this statement kept me grounded while I burned. It was being played on a loop; its return signaled to me that time had indeed passed.

*****

Edward’s need started as a small twinge in my chest, up near my shoulder. It felt almost as if it had lodged against an organ that had since hardened, leaving the need trapped inside a bubble. Carlisle’s words of reassurance were entirely insufficient; I could feel Edward nod blankly against my shoulder when Carlisle’s voice assured him that I was exactly where I should be in the process. He was not convinced that I was ok, that my transformation was proceeding normally, that I would ever wake up. Edward’s need, encapsulated in the bubble in my chest, grew.

It pushed against a rib. My rib did not budge; it was made of stone now. The bubble insinuated itself into my chest cavity and into my abdomen, insisting on being addressed. Edward’s need to know I was ok was consuming him, consuming me. I pushed a sound through my lips; I was afraid if I said much more I would scream, would lose the tenuous control I had over my body. But I did not want the bubble to explode within me. That I knew would make me scream.

“M’okay.” I mumbled.

Edward stiffened next to me, his streaming train of thought interrupted. “Bella?” he asked urgently. “Did you say something? Oh God Bella, did you say something?”

It was all I could manage, but the bubble was gone for now. I returned to focusing on not screaming.

*****

Edward had left me. I didn’t know when he had, or how he had done it, but I knew he had. And yet, I still could not open my scorched eyes to see who was with me. Edward’s cool arms were gone. He had asked someone else to hold me; someone with soft flesh, with warm arms. Maybe Edward was worried that his arms were too cold. Maybe he needed to hunt. If it weren’t for the lingering smell of Edward, of sage and ocean, of honey and lavender, for the sound of Edward’s voice – it must be coming from his scent on the sheets, his voice on a tape recorder, my mind landed on the only logical explanations - I would have given up and screamed. I had to hold on; I had to assume Edward would come back to me.

*****

My body didn’t burn anymore; it had disappeared gradually, but so slowly there was no relief in the process. For a long time the burn lessened but not enough to matter. When it lessened enough to no longer be considered painful, there were too many other sensations to attend to for me to realize that I could sit up, open my eyes. Everything tingled. I felt every movement of air in the room. I heard voices; one was right next to me. Two were fifteen feet away. Three were a few hundred yards from me. I heard breathing, rustling.

“Any moment, now, she’ll wake. I’ll leave you two alone, Edward. I’ll be right outside.” I heard Carlisle’s soft voice rise above Edward’s imposter’s constant whispering in my ear.

Was he speaking to Edward? Was Edward in the room with this stranger and me? What person, what human was holding me against him and why wasn’t Edward holding me? I willed my eyes open, hoping to push apart the skin that had burned together.

My eyes opened easily. I stared at the ceiling. The room was filled with light, with sunshine coming in through the windows in waves of color, the air formed soft cylindrical shapes as it moved around the furniture. The sound of the mosquito netting around the bed was a soft rhythm in my ear. I heard different sizes of waves in the water outside. I heard sand blowing on the beach.

“Bella?” Edward’s voice: my beacon, my rock. I turned my head, too fast. The world spun, settling on his features, next to me, not leaning against a wall watching a stranger hold me. It was his arms that were around me, it was his soft flesh touching mine.

His eyes were not simply amber as my human eyes had believed. They were golden with tiny flecks of black; he was hungry. His shimmering eyes appeared to be illuminated from within. His skin held the luster of satin, the smoothness of marble, and the softness of my former human flesh. His hair was rumpled, bronze, and beautiful. I could feel his chest muscles moving underneath his skin and he pulled me tighter, I could feel the bones in his arms around me. His face broke out into the most magnificent smile as he stared at my lips, at my smile. His smile that traveled from my eyes to the depth of my stomach, causing a moan to escape my lips. I pressed my hand to his delicious mouth, willing myself to believe that he was real. He was far more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. He pulled his head back slightly, laughing at the force of my touch. I pulled my hand back quickly and stared at it, at the silvery sheen of my skin, before turning my gaze back to his molten eyes.

He gasped next to me as our eyes met, his mouth open in shock. “Oh my God, Bella…your eyes.”

*****

A/N: Just wanted to get you to her waking up as a little teaser. I’ve blocked the story out and am ready to start cranking. I probably can’t keep up the pace I had with LYLS, but will try to update every other day as much as possible. I’m so excited for this story.

Of course, I live for reviews and love each of you for reviewing this whenever you’re compelled. I read them over and over and love to get ideas and feedback. I’d love to get a bunch on this prologue, to hear where you want the story to go, what you want to read. It’s killed me with FF being down the past few days not being able to respond to the reviews for Ch 17 of LYLS, so I will get to that as soon as I can.

It may take a chapter or two for a good lemon, but have faith. You know I love me some hot sexy Edward.

I do want to say that I will do things differently than SM did in BD. The Volturi, for one. The other thing is Bella’s power. It will not be the same as in BD, but I do hope to make it interesting and have hinted at it here. In this respect I think SM handled these issues supremely well; there is no need for me to add a second-rate take on this. I will try to take this story in a new direction.